I get why Microsoflt loves AI so much - it basically devour and destroy open source software. Copyleft/copyright/any license is basically trash now. No one will ever want to open source their code ever again.
It fits perfectly with Microsoft's business strategy. Steal other people's ideas, implement it poorly, bundle it with other services so companies force their employees to use it.
I really think that if Microsoft would be forced to improve user experience of Teams, it would lead to measurable impact when it comes to happiness of humankind.
Not just code. You can plagiarize pretty much any content. Just prompt the model to make it look unique, and that’s it, in 30s you have a whole copy of someone’s else work in a way that cannot easily be identified as plagiarism.
I struggle to find this argument compelling, as it sounds more of a straw man argument than a legitimate complain.
If I write a hash table implementation in C, am I plagiarizing? I did not come up with the algortithm nor the language used for implementation; I "borrowed" ideas from existing knowledge.
Lets say I implemented it after learning the algorithm from GPL code; is ky implementation a new one, or is it derivative?
What if it is from a book?
What about the asm upcodes generated? In some architectures, they are copyrighted, or at least the documentation is considered " intellectual property"; is my C compiler stealing?
Is a hammer or a mallot an obvious creation, or is it stealing from someone else? What about a wheel?
> I struggle to find this argument compelling, as it sounds more of a straw man argument than a legitimate complain.
Dude, there are entire websites dedicated to using diffusion models to rip off the styles of specific artists so that people can have their "work" without paying them for it.
You can debate the ethics of this all you want, but if you're going to speak on plagiarism using generative AI, you should at least know as much as the average teenager does about it.
"dude", I could counter-argue that many modern art is "ripping off" Turner's work, but since you know so much about the art world, I'm assuming you know what I'm saying.
Filters for "Van Gogh" or "Impressionist" or "watercolor" have existed for decades now; are they ripping of previous work without paying for it?
When does a specific trace becomes "intellectual property" to be ripped off? Does Mondrian holds the rights on colored squares?
If you don't understand that every living or read artist was "inspired" (modified) by what he saw and experienced, I don't know what to tell you; you come off as one of those people that seem to think that "art" is inspiration; There's a somewhat well known composer in my country that used to say "inspiration is for amateurs".
Having that posture is, in itself, a position of utter and complete ignorance. If you don't understand how you need to absorb something before you transcend it, and how the things you absorbed will define your own transcendence, you know nothing about the creative process and their inner workings; Sure, if a machine does it, and if it uses well-known iteration processes, one can argue if it is art, an artistic manifestation or - better yet - if it has intellectual rights that can be "ripped off"; But beating on the chest and claiming stealing, like somehow a musician never played any melodies composed by someone else or a painter never used the technique or subject decomposition as their peers or their ancestors is, frankly, naive.
Conflating a machine that uses the works of a living, working artist to mimic their style with a watercolor filter is so disingenuous it doesn’t deserve a response. Don’t waste my time with this run-on drivel when you wont engage with the topic at hand.
> works of a living, working artist to mimic their style
Got it. You're picking up one specific example and making it your whole position. I'd suggest you have a look at animation from the 60's to early 80's to understand that ghibli is also an incremental style.
Also, I'd suggest you look at advanced (non ai) tools that mimick both the media and techniques usined in more conventional art.
> engage with the topic at hand
Your point was plagiarism and that I looked like an uninformed teenager. I addressed them both. We don't have to agree on the same thing, but moving goalposts is not a healthy discussion strategy.
I made one example for you when you suggested that the original author made a strawman, and you went on an unhinged rant in response with no bearing on the subject. No goalposts have been moved - you are simply rambling on unrelated nonsense to avoid something as simple as admitting a point you don’t like is not a strawman.
This is immature and unproductive, I wont be responding any further.
If we’re talking about AI as a concept - sure. But there are tools made specifically for this purpose, to the point that some artist’s names are preprogrammed into them for use. That’s a bit beyond what you’re saying, that’s a tool you can blame.
When I get an obviously AI-generated response from someone I'm trying to do business with, it makes me think less of them. I do value genuine responses, far more than the saccharine responses AI comes up with.
Yes. People want to know that others are spending time on an interaction. Taking short-cuts feels impersonal.
There are people with better and worse social skills. Some can, in a very short period of time, make you feel heard and appreciated. Others can spend ten times as long but struggle to have a similar effect. Does it make sense to 'grade' on effort? On results? On skill? On efforts towards building skills? On loyalty? Something else?
Our instincts are largely tuned to our ancestral environment. Even our social and cultural values that got us to say ~2023 have not caught up yet.
We're looking for 'proof of humanity' in our interactions -- this is part of who we are. But how do we get it with online interactions now?
Maybe we have to give up any expectation of humanity if you can't the person right in front of you?
Strap in, the derivative of the derivative of crazy sh1t is increasing.
There will always be a market for niche, high quality electron tweaking. Thing is, it will be a highly competitive market, way outside of reach for >90% of today's professionals, thats why people are worried.
People that don't know that "computer" used to be a profession back in the day.
Maybe it's going the other direction. It lets Microsoft essentially launder open source code. They can train an AI on open source code that they can't legally use because of the license, then let the AI generate code that they, Microsoft, use in their commercial software.
Maybe someone should vibe code the entire MS Office Suite and see how much they like that. Maybe add AD while they are at it. I'm for it if that frees European companies from the MS lock in.
Good idea. My country spends over billion dollars on Microsoft licenses annually, which is more than 200 euros per capita. I think billion dollars a year spent on dev salaries and Claude Code subscription to build MS office replacement would pay itself back quickly enough.
Is there “good” dictatorships?
My personal opinion is there is no good dictator (ok, in HN context, BDFL in a SW project)
I like no totalitarian regime. No one.
A benevolent dictator is the best form of government. Unfortunately though power corrupts and they have a habit of becoming self serving, and very much not benevolent.
I'm not just talking at the nation-state level, but at community, company, sports and so on. There's no shortage of Open Source projects run using the Benevolent Dictator approach.
Compare that to companies run by committee (or governments run by dead-locked congresses) which preport to "represent the people" but just turn into "nothing gets done" factories.
So yes, there are good dictatorships. They're especially good at getting stuff done.
The analogy between projects/companies and governments is missing big components though.
- "Benevolent Dictators" of companies or projects have to obey the law
- They can't forbid competition or alternatives
- Every participant can leave at any time
- If they burn the organization to the ground, the worst case scenario is the organization get replaced and people move on
I think it shows that we're using the word "dictator" way too casually in that case.
> So yes, there are good dictatorships. They're especially good at getting stuff done. There are also obviously bad dictatorships.
All dictatorships, by definition, are better at getting things done than organizations that require non-unilateral assent.
Instead, the difference between a good dictatorship and a bad dictatorship is that in a good dictatorship, dissidents are eliminated quietly or, if not quietly, then with enough spin that everyone considers their elimination to be a good thing.
In other words, what good dictatorships are good at is PR.
Also you can look at the history of the Nazis and it becomes apparent that they weren't good at much of anything except that: so successfully that "efficient Nazis" became a trope for decades after the war despite all the evidence lying around to the contrary.
How is a dictatorship different from a monarchy? There have been plenty of good monarchies throughout history. Frederick The Great, created the Prussian State. Stuart’s were well loved that they ended parliamentary democracy to restore the Stuarts. Victorian, Elizabethan era were also prosperous and well known. Ceasar was the final monarch who united the enmity between the nobles and plebs.
The problem is we look at those states and all we see is the existence of slavery (that existed in all societies till at least 1800AD), women being relegated to a different social role etc. But it is wrong to assume that any of those were due to monarchy and that a monarchy in the modern age would not rule based on modern values. Just look at Singapore, for a small example of a monarchy ruling based on current social mores. Unfortunately since WW1, monarchies throughout the world have vanished, and all we have are liberal democracies, so we can’t say either way.
I'm going to assume that you're speaking of monarchies in which the monarch is the actual ruler, rather than UK, Belgium, the Netherlands or Canada for instance, right?
In that case, I'd say that a monarchy is essentially dictatorship + a (usually) clear line of succession.
There's a little fear in France, because the head of the far right party is the daughter of the former head, and the aunt of the rising star. Since that party seems not unlikely to win the next Presidential elections, we might end up with a monarchy in France.
Xi is not all powerful; no one person is. The state is powerful, not an individual. And all states are ultimately authoritarian. The only question is what form and to what end.
Yes, there is little to no major breakthroughs why keep posting them? Like wow this AI can run 5% better than the last one, jump from 68/100 score to 71/100 score because it uses 100% more GPU power, like, ok?
Can they tax DeepSeek just like they taxed BYD cars? Smh Chinese ruin US industry again and again and again. Where's Trump at?? Why don't he taxed 1000000% of the free $0 DeepSeek AI??
What do you mean by "global" pop culture? Maybe you mean "the west"/European/American pop culture. Being Vietnamese, I and my friends grew up with Journey to the West which at the time was bigger than Star Wars, Three kingdoms which is a lot lot bigger than Game of Thrones, and a lot of Jin Yong's movie adaptations. Star Wars the force is like normal thing in Jin Yong's novels. It's not a "complete" lack of. Sure you have heard of Monkey King, Lu Bu or Guan Yu, Cao Cao? They also won an Oscar long before Korean did. Sure they lose to Japanese's Pokemon but everyone lose to Pokemon really not just China.
China's pop culture having moderate success on directly boarding countries is not really proof that I am wrong. Given it's size, i'd say that's an example of how it fails.
Maybe it's late but no, China's pop culture is not having a "moderate" success on neighboring countries because they tried and failed but because those neighbors actively resist it. They had culturally dominated over neighboring countries like Japan, Korea, Vietnam for hundred of years. See every Korean "historical" movies and you see Chinese culture everywhere. What you're seeing now is the active effort of those countries to stay as far far away from Chinese culture as possible. Imagine you successfully invade China and getting assimilated as the result. That's the Mongols. Thanks to Persia or whatever middle country between China and Europe, Europe did not get infected by Chinese culture. Now ironically thanks to Trump the west is resisting China's dominance before getting infected like Pokemon or KPOP or K-drama.
For 160-bit prime and security level 2^-80, 19 rounds is enough.
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